October 22 - November 26, 2022
From Conduit Gallery:
“Each of the seven new paintings in the exhibition Is This Living? explore one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the Christian tradition’s definitive list of humanly vices. They are each an intimate, personal experience of the artist’s relationship to the faith she was raised in, her relationship to herself and her inner motivations. The Dallas-based painter is known for her portraits, mostly of females, that evoke vulnerability and strength within the figures, either through posture, physical interaction, or compositional format. Gesture and poses are presented as powerful, whether through sexuality or assurance, while facial expressions and anatomical detail are left reduced and neutral within empty or vague settings. The paintings presented in Is This Living? are densely packed with symbolism as each work becomes a thorough and personal exploration by Vaniecia of our complicated relationships with lust, envy, pride, wrath, greed, sloth and gluttony. Vaniecia’s background as a graphic designer informs the Art Nouveau motifs that frame the paintings. Within the framework of the compositions, Vaniecia chose colors that push the psychology of each sin as well as flowers that have similar nuanced associations.
Desireé Vaniecia was born in 1990 in Dallas, Texas. She earned a BFA in Graphic Design from McMurry University in Abilene, Texas in 2013. In 2022 Vaniecia was a recipient of the Repaint History Art Fund and was selected for the SWSW Art Program. In 2021, Vaniecia was awarded the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund from the Dallas Museum of Art. Recent exhibitions include Legacy West Complex, Plano, TX (2022); The Line Hotel, Austin, TX (2022); Janette Kennedy Gallery, Dallas, TX (2022); Our Faces, Our Voices (2020) at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, TX (curated by Raymond Wyatt and Shauna Benoit); Vibrant Thang (2020) at 500X Gallery, Dallas, TX (curated by Ciara Elle Bryant); Sensibility: revealed truths, tensions and vulnerability (2020), ART ROOM, Fort Worth, TX (juried by Taylor Barnes); ART 214 (2019) and Bath House Cultural Center, Dallas, TX (curated by Susan Lecky).”
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